Pythagoras was likewise of opinion that music contributed greatly to
health, if it was used in an appropriate manner. For he was accustomed
to employ a purification of this kind, but not in a careless way. And he
called the medicine which is obtained through music by the name of
purification. But he employed such a melody as this about the vernal
season. For he placed in the middle a certain person who played on the
lyre, and seated in a circle round him those who were able to sing. And
thus, when the person in the centre struck the lyre, those that
surrounded him sung certain pæans, through which they were seen to be
delighted, and to become elegant and orderly in their manners. But at
another time they used music in the place of medicine. And there are
certain melodies devised as remedies against the passions of the soul,
and also against despondency and lamentation,[26] which Pythagoras
invented as things that afford the greatest assistance in these
maladies. And again, he employed other melodies against rage and anger,
and against every aberration of the soul. There is also another kind of
modulation invented as a remedy against desires. He likewise used
dancing; but employed the lyre as an instrument for this purpose. For he
conceived that the pipe was calculated to excite insolence, was a
theatrical instrument, and had by no means a liberal sound.[27] Select
verses also of Homer and Hesiod were used by him, for the purpose of
correcting the soul. Among the deeds of Pythagoras likewise, it is said,
that once through the spondaic song of a piper, he extinguished the rage
of a Tauromenian lad, who had been feasting by night, and intended to
burn the vestibule of his mistress, in consequence of seeing her coming
from the house of his rival. For the lad was inflamed and excited [to
this rash attempt] by a Phrygian song; which however Pythagoras most
rapidly suppressed. But Pythagoras, as he was astronomizing, happened to
meet with the Phrygian piper at an unseasonable time of night, and
persuaded him to change his Phrygian for a spondaic song; through which
the fury of the lad being immediately repressed, he returned home in an
orderly manner, though a little before this, he could not be in the
least restrained, nor would in short, bear any admonition; and even
stupidly insulted Pythagoras when he met him. When a certain youth also
rushed with a drawn sword on Anchitus, the host of Empedocles, because,
being a judge, he had publicly condemned his father to death, and would
have slain him as a homicide, Empedocles changed the intention of the
youth, by singing to his lyre that verse of Homer,
Nepenthe, without gall, o’er every ill
Oblivion spreads;——[28]
and thus snatched his host Anchitus from death, and the youth from the
crime of homicide. It is also related that the youth from that time
became the most celebrated of the disciples of Pythagoras. Farther
still, the whole Pythagoric school produced by certain appropriate
songs, what they called _exartysis_ or adaptation, _synarmoge_ or
elegance of manners, and _epaphe_ or contact, usefully conducting the
dispositions of the soul to passions contrary to those which it before
possessed. For when they went to bed they purified the reasoning power
from the perturbations and noises to which it had been exposed during
the day, by certain odes and peculiar songs, and by this means procured
for themselves tranquil sleep, and few and good dreams. But when they
rose from bed, they again liberated themselves from the torpor and
heaviness of sleep, by songs of another kind. Sometimes, also, by
musical sounds alone, unaccompanied with words, they healed the passions
of the soul and certain diseases, enchanting, as they say, in reality.
And it is probable that from hence this name _epode_, i. e. enchantment,
came to be generally used. After this manner, therefore, Pythagoras
through music produced the most beneficial correction of human manners
and lives.